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Ministers Reflect Baroness Kramer

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Ministers Reflect Baroness Kramer Ministers reflect Baroness Kramer March 2016 2 Baroness Kramer Biographical details Electoral history 2010-present: Liberal Democrat Member of the House of Lords 2005-2010: Member of Parliament for Richmond Park Parliamentary career 2013-2015: Minister of State for Transport 3 Baroness Kramer Baroness Kramer (BK) was interviewed by Nicola Hughes (NH) 18th January 2016 for the Institute for Government’s Ministers Reflect project Nicola Hughes (NH): I would like to start with when you were first appointed as a minister which I think was 2013. Could you tell us what your experience of coming into government was like? Baroness Kramer (BK): My appointment was completely unexpected. On the day of the re-shuffle, I suppose people who thought they might be asked were sitting by their telephones; I was showing some friends around the Palace of Westminster. I kept seeing these annoying messages coming up on my phone, which I ignored for a long period. And when I finally looked properly, there was an ‘Urgent. Get over to the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office.’ So I shot over there. I thought if anything, perhaps I would be invited to be on some kind of advisory group within the banking sector. It never occurred to me that I’d be offered a ministry and then to be offered a Minister of State within the Department for Transport. I mean, it was a delight, but also a shock. And I think I burst into tears, quite frankly, it was such a surprise. I was absolutely thrilled and delighted and felt incredibly privileged, but had done no preparation whatsoever. I then had to wait as I carried on taking friends around the Palace of Westminster until I got a call from David Cameron, whom I spoke to very briefly. He seemed quite relieved that I was happy, so I suppose other people must have been grumpy, but I certainly wasn’t. I was told to go over to the department. The department had been waiting for me for ages. So I physically got to the department and there was my private office in the front lobby, waiting. And there’s an immediate process in which you get tagged and photographed and get your pass. [Then I went] upstairs and it was ‘Minister, we are close to the end of the day. These documents have all got to be signed by this evening.’ And I don’t think the pace ever stopped from there. Where I was extremely lucky, and I’m not sure how much people had clocked this before my appointment, is that I do have quite a background in transport. So even looking at a set of documents that did need signing, because of meetings that were happening in Europe and various other places, I was sitting at this pile of deadlines and at least I had some context, which I think gave me a great deal of confidence. So that got me through the initial start-up. I think as a minister, you are incredibly dependent on your private office and I had an outstanding private office. A couple of people changed over the time that I was there, but I had a very good Head of Office, a lady called Rosa, who really understood how the Civil Service worked and was well-versed in transport. And then the others in my private office were a mix of people who had a very strong transport background and people to whom it was new, but who were unbelievably bright and could catch up on the issues. And particularly, a couple of people with real political nous so that when they picked up material on an issue, they could understand what the crucial decision was, what the pitfalls might be, and where potential conflict lay. And that is, I think, enormously helpful. So I was extremely lucky. I also had the world’s best diary secretary, bar none – a lady called Ellen, who is amazing. I think that also was absolutely crucial to being able to very quickly survive in the role in being a minister. NH: As you said, you had some context in transport and infrastructure. Apart from support from your private office, how did you get your head around how Whitehall works and the day-to-day working of being a minister, signing things off, boxes and so on? BK: Well, I think it is a different role being a Liberal Democrat in a coalition because within in my department, I was the only Lib Dem. Patrick McLoughlin, who was Secretary of State, was, I think, a 4 Ministers reflect very collegiate individual until we got much closer to the general election campaign when things became more tribal, certainly from the Conservative side. In fact, it became very tribal at the very end. Still, we had different perspectives. So, for example, Norman Baker, who was my predecessor as the Liberal Democrat, had set the pace on environmental issues. Issues like sustainability were really nowhere on the Conservative agenda, yet they had become significant in the department’s policy and programmes. There was significant funding behind them. So, there was a difference in perspective. I followed up on Norman’s work and a range of programmes, such as investment in local sustainable transport, train station investment, significant protection for the bus budget, and community transport, would not have made their mark within the department without Liberal Democrats being there. I also played a key role in driving forward the agenda for ultra-low emission vehicles, which was a joint activity of both BIS [Department for Business Innovation & Skills] and the Department for Transport. The same was true for disability issues, which I thought needed to be very much more significant within the department and were of far less interest to the Conservatives than ‘can we build some more highways and get some more cars moving faster down the roads’. However, we did have lots of common ground, HS2 [High Speed Rail 2] being a very good example of that. So as a Liberal Democrat, I was quite isolated and I would think, ‘if only we were all Liberal Democrats in this department, we could really crack this problem’. I feel confident that had we all been Liberal Democrats, this country would now be a major player in ultra-low emission vehicles. We would have moved so much faster to begin to sort out the bus network, which has been really neglected and is a precipitously declining but crucial area of transport. So there are things we could have done differently. I depended a lot on my spad [special adviser]. But again, I only had a small part of his time. He was a very good spad, but one that worked across several departments, whereas the Conservatives had, I think, three spads totally focused on transport and on getting a much more Conservative-biased transport agenda established. So, when it comes to bouncing around ideas, thinking through strategies, considering priorities, you are very isolated when you belong to the minority party in a coalition and there’s just one of you and there’s no one to brainstorm with. NH: And were you able to use your fellow Lib Dems in the Lords or others in the parliamentary party or Lib Dem ministers from other departments? Was there much working together? BK: We did work together and I worked with Dan Rogerson who was [a minister] over at Defra [Department of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs], particularly on air quality issues. We had to throw our bodies across the tracks on a number of occasions to stop the Conservatives watering down the EU’s positions on air quality. I worked with Ed Davey [then Energy Secretary] over at DECC [Department for Energy & Climate Change]. Again, very often, particularly in Europe, the overlap between Transport and DECC was considerable and Ed was in a position where he could take a lead and get some strong messages across, for example, on bio-fuels and ILUC [indirect land use change]. I didn’t have big battles with Conservative colleagues; I don’t want to exaggerate the difference. But there was an underlying difference in emphasis. In some ways, a lot of that reduced during the time when I was at the department because Nick Clegg was leading the push to localism and for devolution. As a minister in the Cabinet Office, Greg Clark, a Conservative, was supporting Nick and was in charge of a new approach to funding the Local Growth Fund; I was the Transport Minister attached to the Local Growth Fund. And interestingly enough, the Conservatives decided that they would stamp their identity 5 Baroness Kramer on devolution, particularly because Michael Heseltine had focussed on the issue and pushed for action. But none of it would have happened without Nick forcing and creating the structures that made it all work. It’s interesting, I think, when you have more than one party in government. It’s not a ‘you win this issue and I win that issue’. You end up very often getting a project which everybody then takes ownership of and considers to be their own – very often better, I think, than the ideas that would have emerged from one party alone. NH: Did anything particularly surprise you when you first went into the department? Was there anything that you hadn’t anticipated about being a minister? BK: I regretted the fact that I was only going to be there for a short time and part of it would be chewed up by the approach of the general election which would paralyse making big changes.
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